When Kairvee Malik, an Indian-trained IT manager working for a non-profit in Mumbai, decided she wanted more education to further her career, she enrolled in York University’s Schulich MBA program in India.

“I wanted to specialize in marketing and do studies in sustainability,” she recalls. “The business schools in India offered only general management courses. Also, with the Schulich MBA program, I would do the first year in India and the second year in Toronto. This was ideal for me for family reasons.”

The Schulich MBA program surpassed Malik’s expectations. “When I came to Toronto, the relationship with my classmates, the faculty and the dean — I became part of the Schulich family.” She graduated with her MBA in 2011, and has since worked in Toronto for Loblaw as a brand analyst.

Malik is emblematic of the kind of students Ontario universities are recruiting to MBA programs through exchanges and partnerships with institutions in India.

“Trade between the two countries is $3-billion, but is forecast to reach $20-billion in the next decade,” says Ashwin Joshi, executive director of the Schulich MBA program in India. “The hope for this program is that it’s going to produce managers who will help Canadian companies operate more efficiently in India, and Indian companies to do so in Canada.”

The Schulich school had a three-year partnership with Mumbai’s S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, graduating 35 students a year. But Schulich is relaunching its MBA in India program this September in Hyderabad, collaborating with the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation.

It has 40 students enrolled, and 10 faculty members from the York campus providing instruction (Joshi notes he is the only Indian-born instructor, proof of the global orientation of the program.)

Schulich Dean Dezsö Horváth’s vision is to eventually have a stand-alone campus in India, with a free flow of MBA students and faculty between the two countries. But for now, India does not yet allow foreign-based institutions to confer degrees on its soil.

Western University’s Ivey Business School, meanwhile, is also building ties with Indian institutions. It collaborates with the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad on publishing joint case studies. Ivey is the largest source of Asian and Indian cases in the world.

Ivey’s partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B) promotes joint research and co-authorship between faculty at IIMB and Ivey, with the goal of jointly publishing articles in leading academic journals.

More recently, Ivey signed a partnership with the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon (near New Delhi) to encourage case teaching, case writing and publishing to develop India-based case materials for use globally.

“The partnerships have led to recognition of the case method as a tool for learning but are also an opportune way to spread the Ivey brand and share what we’re about,” says Greg Yantz, director of Ivey MBA recruiting and admissions.

“We don’t survey Indian students to determine if the case study was where they first heard about Ivey,” he says, “but, anecdotally, I can tell you it certainly has created awareness.”

Ivey faculty members make an average of 10 to 15 trips to India throughout the year for student study trips, field research and case study development.

Meanwhile, Wilfrid Laurier University’s School of Business and Economics plans to debut a new one-year full-time International MBA program in which students would spend their second term in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their third term in India.

WLU is currently negotiating with an Indian partner, and hopes to start the program in September 2014. In the first year, up to 30 participants from Canada, the UAE and India will be able to enroll. “We want this to be an internationally diverse mix of students,” says Hugh Munro, director of Laurier’s MBA program.

Munro says Laurier’s existing MBA program has experienced high demand from Indian students, partly due to its eight months of placement. “Many of them want to remain and work in Canada, and the placement “helps them get the job offer they need.”

Indian students typically account for about 10 students out of an annual enroll ment of 100 in the Laurier MBA program. Like the other business schools, however, Laurier emphasizes the quality of its MBA students from India. “More important than the number of Indian students enrolled,” says Munro, “is making sure we get the right kind of students — those with solid language skills and work experience.”